Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computers, and more particularly to efficient file reclamation in deduplicating virtual media in a computing environment.
Description of the Related Art
In today's society, computer systems are commonplace. Computer systems may be found in the workplace, at home, or at school. Computer systems may include data storage systems, or disk storage systems, to process and store data. Data storage systems, or disk storage systems, are utilized to process and store data. A storage system may include one or more disk drives. These data processing systems typically require a large amount of data storage. Customer data, or data generated by users within the data processing system, occupies a great portion of this data storage. Many of these computer systems include virtual storage components and it is often necessary to retain back up copies of files while also reclaim space used by expired versions of files. Hence, a need exists for increased efficiency for efficient file reclamation in deduplicating virtual media.